Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Renewable Energy News, September 28, 2010

The strong winds off the Atlantic Ocean could become a cost-effective way to power much of the East Coast - especially the Carolinas, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia, a new study released today says.

The report by the conservation advocacy group Oceana argues that offshore wind could generate 30 percent more electricity on the East Coast than could be generated by the region's untapped oil and gas. It predicts that wind from the ocean could be cost competitive with nuclear power and natural gas to produce electricity.

Yingli Green Energy Holding Company Ltd, one of the world's leading solar panel makers, is planning to increase its production capacity by at least four times to meet strong demand from overseas markets.

"We will continuously enlarge the scale of our production since we received orders for 4 gigawatts (gW) for 2011 by the end of June. The current production capacity is expected to just exceed 1 gW," Bryan Li, chief financial officer of Yingli, told China Daily.

The New York-listed company began construction of a 100-megawatt multi-crystalline silicon solar cell manufacturing plant last month in Hainan province at a cost of 770 million yuan. The new plant is expected to be completed by May 2011.

South Dakota Wind Partners says it has secured the $16 million it needs to start building a publicly invested wind farm near White Lake.

The federal government will pay the rest of the estimated $23 million cost.

The seven-turbine wind farm would be next to a larger 101-turbine project. It will be built, operated and maintained by Basin Electric Power Cooperative, which also will buy the electricity it produces.

Two years ago, the contrast between the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor on the issue of large-scale wind power was clear.

As Gov. James Douglas reiterated his longstanding opposition to the “commercialization and industrialization” of Vermont’s ridge tops, his Democratic opponent, Gaye Symington, touted an aggressive pro-wind platform that would see turbines providing 20 percent of the state’s electricity needs by 2018.

“It is time for Jim Douglas to stop tilting at windmills and let me build them instead,” Symington said at a 2008 campaign event in Hinesburg.

This year, distinguishing between the major-party candidates’ views on wind power isn’t so easy. Both Republican Brian Dubie and Democrat Peter Shumlin have long championed utility-scale wind generation as a key component in Vermont’s energy future. Dubie’s stance on the issue, in fact, has been one of the more notable differences between him and Douglas.

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